Meet Trellis

Problem

Food safety and other audits are supposed to help identify and address risk, but mounds of PDF reports don’t lend themselves to easy analysis. Current processes to electronically exchange audit and other data are often inefficient, and don’t use global data standards so they aren’t interoperable.

As a result, your company must first either manually enter data from those reports into your own computer systems, or must convert the information from various sources and formats. In a perishables industry, time is a luxury you often don’t have.

Solved

Trellis helps companies get more ROI from their audit data. Trellis provides a produce-specific framework to electronically exchange authenticated food safety audit data and other customer-required information between trading partners. When you can mine data across all your audits, you can understand food safety risks and address them.

On a consistent system, we can use the data we all have in an efficient manner. The [multiple] systems that we’re running now really make things more complicated and expensive to run.

Bart Connors

CEO, Basin Gold

Trellis gets all the logistics of sharing information out of the way, so that now we can focus on the value of the information and what to do with it.

Drew Zabrocki

CEO / CTO, Centricity Global

The passing back and forth of Excel spreadsheets and entering data a hundred times for a hundred different companies is one day going to be as archaic as newspapers are today.

Robert Kershaw

President, Domex Superfresh Growers

Making food safety information operational can be resource intensive and very complicated. Trellis will simplify that process, freeing up our food safety resources to extract more value from that information.

Mark Mignogna

VP of Quality Assurance, Sysco

What Trellis Is-and Isn’t

Trellis is a framework, not a standard. That’s geek-speak for “adaptable, not prescriptive”.

Trellis is open source, not proprietary, so it is free. (If you don’t have the technical capability in-house, you can hire an expert to help harness its value.)

Trellis will not change audit contents or questions. It will bring consistency to how the data is recorded, stored and transmitted, so that the supply chain can get more value from the data.

Trellis already supports the most widely-used audit schemes, and more can easily be added if needed. Many scheme owners are aware of and are supportive of Trellis.

Your data will continue to be owned by whoever owns it now. Use of Trellis will not change the ownership of the data, it simply provides a framework by which you and your partners can get more use out of it.

Trellis is not a platform or cloud that receives or stores audit data. Trellis is the framework by which systems and people that have data can send it to the systems and people they want to receive that data – no intermediary necessary.

Certification Bodies

What you’ll want to know

Certification bodies will want to take steps now to begin implementing Trellis, because your customers will be requesting it very soon. Here are some things you’ll want to know.

Trellis will not change audit contents or questions. It willbring consistency to how the data is recorded, stored and transmitted, so that the supply chain can get more value from the data.

The Trellis framework already supports the most widely-used audit schemes, and more can easily be added if needed. Many scheme owners are aware of and are supportive of Trellis.

Trellis is open source, not subscription-based, so it is free and easy to use.

Trellis is not a cloud platform that holds or stores data. Data is only ever seen by or stored in the platforms of the people using Trellis to send and receive data.

Because Trellis is open source, you can contribute, such as to add additional audit schemes if needed.

Data is secured and tamper-free using authentication protocols both similar and complementary to blockchain and Bitcoin.

Data will continue to be owned by whoever owns it now.

We are developing a starter kit featuring single sign-on access.

Audit data will continue to be owned by the data’s creators.­

The hard work is already done, and it’s free to you – use it!

IT Leaders

What you may want to know about Trellis

Since your department will ultimately be tasked with making Trellis happen, here’s what we thought you would want to know to start:

Trellis will save your company the time and money currently being spent to manually enter audit data into company computer systems.

With electronic data, you can analyze findings across all your audits to understand and reduce your company’s risk and enhance food safety.

The Trellis framework already supports the most widely-used audit schemes, and more can easily be added by those who need it. Many scheme owners are aware of and are supportive of Trellis.

Trellis is open source, not subscription-based, so it is free and easy to use

Because Trellis is open source, you can contribute, such as to add additional audit schemes if needed.

Trellis can be used by anyone, anywhere – you, or your service provider(s).Trellis will allow your company to selectively share authenticated audit data with only chosen trading partners and service providers.

We are developing a starter kit featuring single sign-on access.

Trellis is not a cloud platform that holds or stores data. Data is only ever seen by or stored in the platforms of the people using Trellis to send and receive data.

Data is secured and tamper-free using authentication protocols both similar and complementary to blockchain and Bitcoin.Data will continue to be owned by whoever owns it now.

Trellis is a great on-ramp that can help with any future blockchain initiatives.

Your company can transmit other customer-requested data too, including FSMA-mandated compliance data.

Getting Started Is Easy

Trellis offers options to suit all technical capabilities and preferences. If you would like to participate in a 15-minute conference call specific to your interests, please use the contact form below and we will schedule a convenient time.

Self-serve: Join and contribute to the open source community; implement the functioning demo in your own data center or Docker® instance.

Just plug it in: Turn-key apps and plug-ins for PDFs, spreadsheets and common tools like Google® Drive, etc. are underway. For more information please contact us.

Need a hand? Professional implementation is available including enterprise security, hosting and onboarding.

The Trellis community includes technical, business and strategic implementation organizations with subject matter expertise in food and ag. We’re can make introductions to those who have demonstrated proficiency with the framework and are positioned to help your organization gain the maximum benefit from Trellis. If your company would like to participate as a service provider, please contact us.

Contact Us

Trellis is open source and welcomes contribution from industry leaders, service providers, regulatory bodies and NGOs. Enterprise and private deployment options are also available to support your strategic and technical requirements. Please contact us for information.

Produce Marketing Association (PMA) has partnered with Purdue University’s Open Ag Technology & Systems Group (OATS) to help the fresh produce industry to get more ROI from fresh produce food safety and other audit data. Trellis was developed with industry input, it already supports the most common audit schemes, and it is open source (=free).

Food safety and other audits are supposed to help identify and address risk, but mounds of PDF reports don’t lend themselves to easy analysis. Current processes to electronically exchange audit and other data are often inefficient, and don’t use global data standards so they are not interoperable.

As a result, a company must first either manually enter data from those reports into its own computer systems, or must convert the information from various sources and formats. In a perishables industry like fresh produce, time is a luxury companies often don’t have.

Trellis provides a produce-specific framework to electronically exchange authenticated food safety audit data and other customer-required information between trading partners. When a company can actually mine its data across all its audits, that company can understand and assess any food safety risks and address them.

There are many reasons why company executives should want to implement Trellis to receive and send company audit information:

•Save time and money staff is currently spending to manually enter audit data into your company’s computer systems.•With electronic data, your company can analyze findings across all its audits to understand and reduce the company’s risk, and enhance food safety.•Your company can transmit other customer-requested data too, including FSMA-mandated compliance data.•Improve trust and connections with trading partners while safeguarding your data and intellectual property.

Trellis was developed by OATS with PMA’s Trellis Task Force. Task force members hail from across the fresh produce supply chain, including audit scheme owners, food safety and technology solution providers, grower/packer/shippers and retailers. The project is led by PMA Vice President of Supply Chain Efficiencies Ed Treacy, working with OATS’ Aaron Ault, senior research engineer at Purdue University.

Trellis’ initial development was funded by PMA with considerable in-kind donations of time and effort from the OATS team.

To date, the following companies have donated funds for OATS to develop Application Program Interfaces (APIs, or software applications) to help implement Trellis: Azzule Systems, Centricity Global and Wilson Produce.

Now that Trellis’ initial development has been completed under the direction of PMA and its Trellis Task Force, OATS will establish an industry governing body of stakeholders. Initially, that governing body will be PMA Trellis Task Force members.

No. The Trellis framework already supports the most widely-used audit schemes, and more can easily be added if needed. Many scheme owners are aware of and are supportive of Trellis. Since the project is open source, anyone can contribute to building out the framework to include additional schemes if needed.

Your data will continue to be owned by whoever owns it now. Use of Trellis does not change the ownership of the data, it simply provides a framework by which you and your partners can get more use out of that data.

PMA has long-established expertise in fresh produce data standards, e-commerce and food safety. OATS is devoted to bringing open source projects to agriculture, and has already done similar work for other ag sectors.

Trellis is not a cloud platform that holds or stores audit data. Trellis is a framework by which systems and people that have data can send it to the systems and people they want to receive that data – no intermediary necessary. OATS and PMA only help oversee the framework definitions and freely available code for others to use. Data is only ever seen by or stored in the platforms of the people sending and receiving data.